Sacred Demonstrations, or the Christian Euclid, Book II

nevertheless, as I said, because one must proceed from things more known to us but unknown to nature to things less known to us and most known to nature, I shall take the world in the first place, God in the second, and man in the third. Thus, for me, the world will stand as a point, but only for the sake of order.

Definition of the World.

1 The world is whatever consists of the sublime, lowest, and middle nature, made by the first cause of itself and of man, for the sake of its own honor and the benefit to be conferred upon man.

2 God is the first cause of the universe, the maker, mover, preserver, and renewer, moving the immovable, powerful, knowing by choice or will, acting infinitely, producing all things by the force of Himself and for the sake of man.

3 Man is a rational, mortal animal endowed with free will, capable of religion, having within himself the image of the world and of its author, for whose sake the utility of the world consists, having dominion over inferior things.

1 Those three descriptions must be considered and examined attentively so that they cannot be called into doubt later. No one doubts that the world comprehends all created things; for that reason it is called by many, "Whatever it is." That it consists of various and distinct natures is evident to the eyes, for the elemental region is conceived by the remaining senses, the celestial by the eye. That there are separate powers and intellects segregated from matter, since in the whole of nature and most especially in the super-celestial region, I see that this is not doubted by the Peripatetics nor by the Platonists, and I have liquidly proven it in the first book On the Concord of the World, in the chapter on separate substances. Neither the Jew, nor the Muhammedan, nor the Gentile doubts this: therefore, the third part of the world must be ascribed to the celestial beings. That the world was made, this argues: